Computer systems are constantly improving in terms of speed, reliability, and processing capability. As a result, computers are able to handle more complex and sophisticated applications. However, as computers improve, performance demands placed on mass storage and input/output (I/O) devices increase. In general, I/O performance has had difficulty keeping pace with the growing capabilities of the computers.
The mass storage industry faces two primary challenges: (1) to improve I/O performance so that data access does not become a limiting factor for an application, and (2) to provide access to on-line data at levels of reliability well in excess of the expected lifetimes of the computer systems that process it. See, The RAIDBook: A Source Book for RAID Technology, published Jun. 9, 1993, by the RAID Advisory Board, Lino Lakes, Minn. It is desirable that storage devices meet these goals in a cost-effective manner.
The performance of present disk I/O systems is limited because data stored thereon is located by comparatively slow processes of seeking and disk rotation. Additionally, the data is transferred to and from the disk media in a serial bit stream which also inhibits speed. Manufacturers, therefore, attempt to design systems which rearrange data on the disks in such a manner that the more frequently accessed data is evenly distributed across the I/O resources.
There are three primary design criteria for mass storage systems: cost, performance, and availability. It is most desirable to produce memory devices that have a low cost per megabit, a high input/output performance, and high data availability. "Availability" is the ability to recover data stored in the storage system even though some of the data has become inaccessible due to failure or some other reason and the ability to insure continued operation in the event of such failure. Typically, data availability is provided through the use of redundancy wherein data, or relationships among data, are stored in multiple locations.
There are two common methods of storing redundant data. According to the first or "mirror" method, data is duplicated and stored in two separate areas of the storage system. For example, in a disk array, the identical data is provided on two separate disks in the disk array. The mirror method has the advantages of high performance and high data availability due to the duplex storing technique. However, the mirror method is also relatively expensive as it effectively doubles the cost of storing data.
In the second or "parity" method, a portion of the storage area is used to store redundant data, but the size of the redundant storage area is less than the remaining storage space used to store the original data. For example, in a disk array having five disks, four disks might be used to store data with the fifth disk being dedicated to storing redundant data. The parity method is advantageous because it is less costly than the mirror method, but it also has lower performance and availability characteristics in comparison to the mirror method.
The present invention provides a memory system which achieves the three desired attributes of high performance, high data availability, and low cost.